First Time Buyer - Insurance

robgoode

I'm going to be receiving a call in the next few days regarding insurance policies for our new house purchase. Completion is due in May but I'm unsure of what policies we actually need and what are optional.

Different ones I've read up about include life insurance, building and contents insurance, critical illness cover and others.

Can anyone give me some advice on what we do need to sign up to and what are the ones we aren't needing to get instantly.

juniordoc

Buildings insurance is needed from exchange.
Life insurance may be a condition of your mortgage, if it's not then it's up to you, worthwhile if you have dependents.
Contents insurance is rerecommended from whenever you move your contents in.
Critical illness cover entirely optional, check what sick pay your employer offers first.

ACG

The only insurance you must have is Buildings insurance (assuming you have a mortgage).

Everything else is optional.

However, that does not mean you should not consider them. I always remember when I worked for another broker. We had a customer who my boss kept trying to get him to take out life insurance and critical illness (probably more for the commission if we are being honest). The bloke put it off for 4 years. After the third time of saying he will review it next year, he came back to us asking to cash in his pension, we asked why.

He had a heart attack. He had no money put aside and basically had to go to work to pay the bills. He could not cash in his pension as he was not old enough.

I have no idea what actually happened to him as I left the company not long after, but he was in a difficult position because he had no money and bills to pay.

Life insurance costs peanuts. I pay £10 a month for my income protection (it only pays £500 a month but I took it out for best doctors rather than actual benefit). Even if you threw £20-30 a month at protection policies, you would probably not notice it massively on a monthly basis but if you ever had to make a claim, it would be a big help.

davidmcn

juniordoc wrote: »

Buildings insurance is needed from exchange.

Or from completion if you're buying a newbuild (which the OP appears to be), or if you're buying anything in Scotland.

Nicola83

We're buying a new build and we're in the process of sorting all this out too. We've got buildings and contents insurance set up to start from completion date, which is preliminarily set at 23rd Feb.
We've also sorted out life assurance, critical illness cover, and income protection, our mortgage advisor has been sorting it all out for us. It's definitely worth doing, as you never know what might happen in the future.

robgoode

I’m moving into a new build property so I don’t need to take out buildings insurance until completion? I’ve been reading everywhere that insurance needs to be ready at exchange.

I’m taking out both life and critical illness cover for both of us. Rough searches brings up £20-£25 per month combined which looks a good price.